'The content in this issue of Axon: Creative Explorations offers a set of variations upon the theme of Absent Presences, the Secret and the Unsayable. The symposium of papers and poems gathered here derives from a day-long conversation at Reading University, UK, in June 2018. Practitioners and commentators from across the UK, and colleagues connected with the International Poetry Studies Institute, University of Canberra, convened to consider several preoccupations in Contemporary Lyric writing. We explored the parameters of our general theme through panels grouped variously under the titles ‘Present Absences and Absent Presences’; ‘Keeping a Secret by Saying You’ve Got One’; ‘Ambiguous, Ambivalent, and Open Utterance’; and ‘Showing the Unsayable’. These topic headings are worth repeating now, since their residual aftermaths are evident in the texture of the material in this issue. Much of the content published here has been reworked after our June 2018 conversations, and new material has been added by colleagues unable to speak at the initial symposium. The poems also included here offer a new slant, new impetus around the shared themes. This issue of Axon, therefore, contains multiple extensions from, and new reflections on, that original moment.' (Introduction)
